Gadgetory

if wearables are ever going to be awesome it's likely going to happen in baby steps not in leaps and bounds like we've all been hoping for that's what I've determined from wearing the Samsung gear fit to over the past few weeks now does this mean it's a bad wearable not at all it's actually a pretty good activity tracker it's just getting harder to stand out amid all of the activity trackers out there now the gear fit 2 is a sports band not a SmartWatch that manages to cram a pretty big display and GPS into a wristband form factor which is something that not many step counting wristbands have for the most part smartwatches don't make great fitness trackers so Samsung is offering something way more sport focused and an attempt to get more people into its hardware ecosystem the good news is that the gear fit 2 has improved and a lot of the ways that needed to from the first Samsung gear fit from 2 years ago the bad news is that I had a really spotty experience of battery life which is still one of the biggest drawbacks of wearables with full resolution displays but the bigger question is whether you should spend a hundred and eighty dollars on this thing if you're watching this video I'm guessing you might already be interested in it or you have an Android phone if you don't have an Android phone I'm going to save you some time you can stop watching right now because the Samsung gear fit 2 only works with Android phones hardware wise it's pretty standard all the usual suspects are in the build there's a flexible plastic wristband with a railroad style strap and it has two physical buttons one that acts as a power and home button and another that acts as a back button the display though is what really stands out it's a rich glossy curved Super AMOLED touchscreen and you'll notice it displays information in a vertical format so that you don't have to twist your wrist to see stuff the only downside to the Super AMOLED display is that it's not that easy to see an outdoor lighting which outdoor fitness enthusiasts aren't going to like but then again it's not easy to see the displays of smart watches and other color displays in bright light either there are optical sensors on the underside of the band for measuring your heart rate and in stable workout environments I found heart rate readings to be very consistent with a chest monitor and Bonus Time the gear fit to has that built-in GPS I mentioned this makes it one of the very few wristband style trackers to include GPS along with the Microsoft band 2 and the garmin vivosmart HR plus so what exactly is the gear fit to track it's more like what doesn't they records running walking hiking cycling stair stepper stationary biking elliptical training treadmill running a whole bunch of other stuff including yoga and then there's an other tile that will let you record any other type of activity that might not be categorized like a lot of other fitness trackers these days the band will automatically recognize some activities and Samsung has tried to display the data in an interesting way so for example there's a 24-hour time line view of your activity and if you use GPS you'll see a map after your workout is completed all of your data from the band is going to sync to Samsung's s health application I like the s health app and it syncs pretty quickly but I will say as with a lot of Samsung software I kind of wish it was simpler first you're going to be two apps even use this band if your manager app which is the same one you use to manage Samsung smartwatches and the s health app the gear app is where you're going to manage all the notifications that appear on your band and the s health app is where you're going to manage your health settings so you'll see a bunch of tiles here which you can tap on to measure your stress or log your food or see more information about a specific workout but personally I'd rather see it all in a linear or a chronological format and then the app will share data with partner apps like RunKeeper and Strava but this is where it gets confusing there are a bunch of partner apps under more in the app and then there's a different set of partner apps in the settings area of the app and then even when you go to download something like the Spotify app onto the wristband you have to go to the galaxy app store it's not in the partner apps list so yeah sharing data and getting apps onto the device that's sort of all over the place another downside to this band well it's big at least for my wrist it's flexible but it's big the display takes up a lot of space I would not call this delicate second its water-resistant but it's not fully waterproof so you can't swim with it okay and then there's battery life Samsung is promising three to four days but my first review unit may have been a dud because in a couple of occasions it didn't even last a day especially if I worked out using GPS my second review unit seems much more consistent with Samsung's promises then my colleague Dan Seifert tried another review unit and his lasted about a day bottom line is that battery life seems to be a crapshoot with early versions of this which is part of the reason why I can't give it a wholehearted recommendation despite all that I have to give Samsung credit where it's due its first gear fit wrist fan felt kind of like a me-too wearable like hey let's just make a wearable because every one of their mother and their cousin is making an activity tracker right now this one shows commitment it's a more serious sport band it tracks a whole bunch of different Fitness activities and it tries to display the data to you in an interesting way do I think it's the best sports band out there no I'm going to reserve that for something that works with multiple operating systems is fully waterproof and has a display you can see outdoors this makes it a pretty serious contender among all the other bands out there you only down scientists sorry ready and action 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